Poverty in Paradise

Resolving the Cuba paradox

It’s interesting when you travel. You get out of your ruts and encounter new people and have interesting conversations. One I experienced was an oldstyle hippie (go figure on the Hilo coast) who extolled how lovely Cuba is. He’d never been there, but he thought it sounded like paradise.

Okay, he’s sitting in paradise, but the politics of discontent have him yearning for another “paradise” which might not even exist.

He sees Cuba as a socialist success story boasting a higher quality of life than the United States. Pleasantly chatting with him at a coffee shop in Pahoa was like a misadventure into a subReddit, though I’ve seen this sentiment find its way to as mainstream an outlet as The Guardian.

Source - United States State Department

I love to debate and it seemed he did too, but then a third person — a lovely woman — chimed in acknowledging Cuba’s struggles but blaming it all on the United States embargo. We all sat around at an outdoor table, drinking coffee, eating malasadas, and deepening our tans while amiably debating Cuba’s actual conditions.

Political debate doesn’t get much better than that.

Obviously, these two positions — both solid leftist opinions — are mutually exclusive. Cuba cannot be propserous and impoverished at the same time, and my two conversationalist acquaintances began to realize this as they were talking to me.

This might have been because we were three Boomers talking geo politics and I was the only one of us who could accurately look things up on my phone using this “newish” invention called the Internet.

It’s got nothing to do with age, folks. It’s got to do with adaptability.

Paradox

Cuba is either flourishing from its embrace of socialism or it is faltering under the burden of the US embargo.

It can’t be both.

The Left has created a paradox on this subject and are now stuck in its event horizon. You need to examine historical and contemporary evidence to decide which argement is right, or to determine both are wrong.

Did Socialism Make Cuba Rich?

So let’s look at the United Nations’ Human Development Index (HDI). It’s a metric that tracks various statistics like health, education, income, and living conditions, to assess the well-being of a country’s citizens.

The United States ranks 21st on the HDI (I find that not particularly impressive), while Cuba occupies the 83rd spot. This globally-accepted measure shows Cuba doesn’t have a higher quality of life than the United States.

Not to admit defeat, my two new friends argued that even though Cuba doesn’t surpass the United States, it fares better on the HDI that many non-socialist countries in Latin American such as Mexico, Peru, Columbia, and Brazil.

I conceded that. But does Cuba’s comparatively higher quality of life depend on socialism?

I happen to know something about Cuba’s historical economic performance, so it didn’t take much effort to show that Cuba was once a remarkably prosperous nation compared to other Latin American countries. A study in the Journal of Economic History found that pre-revolutionary Cuba was “a prosperous middle-income economy” with income levels that were “among the highest in Latin America” and almost on par with some European countries. After the adoption of socialism in 1959, “Cuba slipped down the world income distribution.” Cuba’s relative success predates its adoption of socialism and has shown a significant decline post-revolution.

Those cool buildings and classic cars in the photo above all predate the revolution.

Poor, but Healthy?

That other Boomer woman declared Cuban socialism has brought its citizens an incredible medicare system. Look at how low their infant-morality rates are and they have so many doctors per capita.

Again, look at history. In 1957, Cuba had the 13th lowest infant mortality rate globally, but it’s slipped to 49th place today. Economist Roberto M. Gonzales found that the “ratio of late fetal deaths to early neonatal deaths in countries with available data stood between 1.04 and 3.03” but Cuba “with a ratio of 6, was a clear outlier.” He observed that these data indicate that doctors have likely been re-categorizing late fetal deaths as early neonatal deaths, thus skewing the data. The infant mortality rate probably stands between 7.45 and 11.16 per 1,000 births. That would put Cuba in 60th place in the world, at best. Many more corrections could be made to these data, but that one correction is enough to demonstrate how bleak Cuba’s actual ranking is.

The per capita ratio of doctors is also missing context. Cuba does indeed have many doctors, but this is because the government incentivizes it. Doctors are Cuba’s most valuable export. The government views them as a commodity to be exploited. Brazil and other nations pay the Cuban government millions for their doctors and medical services, while the doctors themselves see very little of that money. Doctors who defect from Cuba often describe their roles as virtual slavery. Slavery isn’t something to brag about.

It is a failure of socialism, not a success.

It could explain why, for 60 years Cuba has experienced a net negative migration rate, while the United States and other capitalist countries enjoy strong net positive migration rates.

If life is so good in Cuba, why are people building rafts out of raincoats to try and make it to Florida?

Is It the Embargo?

So Cuba’s prosperity is a myth, but my Leftist friends insisted Cuba is only poor because of the US embargo.

Sorry, but Fidel Castro and Che Cuevara bragged the embargo strenthened the revolution and solidified anti-US sentiment. Instead of attributing their poverty to their government’s poor performance, political scientists think it might have hardened Cuban resistance to foreign coercion.

Cuban economist Carmelo Mesa-Lago in his book Market, Socialist, and Mixed Economies points out that Cuba began trading with socialist countries like the Soviet Union as early as 1960, confirming “all socialist imports combined significantly surpassed US imports in the early part of that year.” This challenges the argument that the embargo was the primary cause of Cuba’s economic difficulties, as these economic struggles became apparent immediately following the revolution. Truthfully, most effects of the embargo were not felt until the fall of the Soviet Union in the early ’90s. Cuba went through 30 years of economic struggle while supported by the USSR, but there was a noticeable downturn in the 1990s because the USSR could no longer subsidize them. The Cuban government resorted to moderate liberalization reforms to offset the resulting problems. The success of these moves toward capitalism provides further proof that Cuba would be better off as a capitalist nation.

Bye Bye, Paradox

We’ve resolved the Cuban Socialist paradox. Cuba isn’t successful because of socialism. It was much more successful before the socialist government and that success dwindled rapidly after the revolution. Cuba isn’t a failure because of the sanctions. The embargo had little effect on the Cuban economy.

Sadly, Cuba is a clear example of socialism’s failures.

The US could probably help Cuba by abandoning the embargo that hasn’t really had the desired effect. It strengthens the communist government by providing a scapegoat for the failures associated with its socialism. Expanded trade relations would introduce more Cubans to capitalism, which can become contagious.

Economic freedom can improve Cuban lives, but it would help if we stopped making excuses for its failed socialist policies.